Patrice Chéreau: the outsider looking in

French director Patrice Chéreau's new film ``Gabrielle" is a return to themes explored in his 2001 film ``Intimacy" -- what happens to married women who take lovers, what happens to their relationships when their secret lives are exposed, why people choose to stay in their marriages rather than leave.

``Gabrielle" is set in Paris in the early 1900s. A prominent publisher (Pascal Greggory ) arrives at his museum-like home expecting to find his dinner and his wife of 10 years (Isabelle Huppert ) , a woman he has no closeness with but instead ``loves like a collector loves his most prized possession." He finds a note from her, telling him that she has left him for another man. He collapses. An hour later she returns, and for the rest of the film they battle out the terms of their new relationship .

``Gabrielle," based on a novella by Joseph Conrad, opened Friday at the Museum of Fine Arts and will play five more times. Earlier this month, it was the opening - night film of the Boston French Film Festival and screened to a sold-out house.

Chéreau, visiting Boston for the first time, was present to take questions from the audience. The next morning, the 61-year-old director continued the conversation in the lobby of his downtown hotel. The following are excerpts from the interview.

Q: You've said that you're an outsider -- what do you mean by that?

A: Because I started with the theater. That gives me the position of not being part of the family, you know? Which is good, because I don't know if I want to be part of the big family of the French cinema. For me, the way I do productions -- directing, working with the camera, working with the lighting -- is normal. But I am aware that for the crew, how I work is quite unusual. People seem to be surprised at what I do on the set, and so I am aware of coming from another world -- which is always good.

Q: With this film, which uses theatrical elements such as title cards and lush orchestration, you seem to have let go of any intimidation you might have had about whether you are perceived as a stage director or opera director or film director.

A: Yes. I wasn't worried anymore about taking the risk of people saying that there is too much theater in my work or that this is bad cinema because it is too close to the theater. I said I don't care, because I am sure that I make good films.

Q: Is it because of this particular material or your confidence as a filmmaker?

A: My confidence in me as a filmmaker, which is new. I never trusted myself. It's a totally new situation. It arrived only 10 years ago, immediately after ``Queen Margot" [his 1994 film with Isabelle Adjani and Daniel Auteuil ].

Q: What changed?

A: In 1992, '93, I made two films oneafter another for the first time in my life. Usually I was doing a film every four or five years, and you cannot do films like that. Going from the mix of one movieto the preparation of another movie,suddenly something opened to me in my brain, and everything I learned in the first film I put immediately into my next film.

Q: When we spoke in 2001 about ``Intimacy," you said that in many ways the experiences of your own mother were in the film -- that your mother had spent much of her life with another man --

A: -- yes, never leaving my father.

Q: I'm wondering if you were thinking of your mother as well for this film.

A: Probably I was thinking more of me in this film, of the difficulty of living with somebody. That is something that we all relate to, right? I just tried to understand what happens, why everything went so bad for this couple, why they don't understand each other, why they don't know each other. Part of the answer is that it's difficult to know the person you live with. You don't know exactly everything. And you don't need to. A French actress recently told me that the film gives the impression that men and women are not able to live together. And I felt it was right -- that was exactly the impression I had, reading the text by Conrad and watching the film.

Q: Are you married? Have you been married?

A: No.

Q: Have you lived with women?

A: No, never. With men.

Q: Do you have a partner now, whom you've lived with for a while?

A: Well, almost two years now. It's new. But I have a lot of experiences -- unhappy experiences as well, anybody [does]. You break, you suffer, and after you arrive at an age you try to be a little more calm and peaceful.

Q: Do you think this disconnect you talk about between men and women is the same for men and men who share a romance?

A: [Pause] No, it's a little different. The path is exactly the same when you are living with somebody -- you are trying to build a life together, you have to be careful to pay attention. But as I look at it from outside, sometimes I have the impression -- what I try to say in all my films -- that men don't really understand women. Last week I was at a dinner, and there were men and women there, and a man was saying how respectful the film was of women, which I believe, and how important it was to respect women, but at the same time he never let the women talk. You know what I mean? [Laughs] And it happens all the time. So I'm just someone trying to look in from the outside.

Q: So when you talk about being an outsider, you mean both as a theater director doing film, and as someone outside the relations of men and women?

A: Yes. It's an advantage.

Q: So I wonder if the ultimate movie about gay men will be made by a straight woman. From Iran.

A: [Laughs] Yeah. Exactly.

Q: Do you think of yourself as a nostalgic person? Someone who looks back often at what he's done?

A: No. I think I'm better now, anyway. I feel I am smarter. I feel that experience, in a way, can help me, even though in another way it can pull you back and be a burden. But I think experience is a beautiful thing. Aging is not beautiful. But I'm smarter than I was when I was 20. And I think it's useless to regret anything. I try to go forward with projects and not look back so much. I'm someone who is interested in learning something new and facing situations I'm not able to solve. Let's try something I don't know -- I'm interested in that, in facing that fear.

Leslie Brokaw can be reached at lbrokaw@globe.com.